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christian.einfeldt writes "The Munich decision to move its 14,000 desktops to Free Open Source Software created a big splash back in 2003 as news circulated of the third-largest German city's defection from Microsoft. When it was announced in 2003, the story garnered coverage even in the US, such as an extensive article in USA Today on-line. Currently, about 60% of desktops are using OpenOffice, with the remaining 40% to be completed by the end of 2009. Firefox and Thunderbird are being used in all of the city's desktop machines. Ten percent of desktops are running the LiMux Debian-based distro, and 80% will be running LiMux by 2012 at the latest. Autonomy was generally considered more important than cost savings, although the LiMux initiative is increasing competition in the IT industry in Munich already. The program has succeeded because the city administration has been careful to reach out to all stakeholders, from managers down to simple end users."

From reading both, I tend to gravitate towards the failure side. It's 2009 and only 10% migration? Wasn't this suppose to save money? It's a frigging embarrassment! How are you suppose to point to Munich as an example of free and open-source software working on a city scale when they can't even implement it in a reasonable time-frame?

It's supposed to save money in the long run, of course MS will be cheaper at first because you don't have to cope with defeating the vendor lock-in if you stay with Windows but it matters what happens a few years down the line.

It's supposed to save money in the long run, of course MS will be cheaper at first because you don't have to cope with defeating the vendor lock-in if you stay with Windows but it matters what happens a few years down the line.

Additionally, the money they use will be channeled to local companies (which means more jobs, improvement of local skill pool, making it cheaper to repeat such transitions in other cities).

Definitely beats shoveling the money to american robber baron company by any stretch.

Additionally, the money they use will be channeled to local companies (which means more jobs, improvement of local skill pool, making it cheaper to repeat such transitions in other cities).
Definitely beats shoveling the money to american robber baron company by any stretch.

Though the exact effect on Germany's balance of trade depends on other factors, including the EUR/USD exchange rate and global state of the economy.

Bearing in mind that the have migrated only 10% of desktops in 6 years

One reason the migrations has been slow is because in 2004 [www.osor.eu] they decided they wanted to do a study, the "study was conducted to clear up legal insecurities related to software patents. The actual migration has been running since 2005." Still it has been a long tyme.

It's a good idea to get things done as quickly as possible, generally speaking, but you should also give them as much time as necessary to do them PROPERLY.

Munich, it seems, was under no particular pressure to rush the project through and meet and arbitrarily-set deadlines so that shareholders would be satisfied or so that a C*O would be able to collect his bonus. Isn't it better to take a few more years and actually do the job well, in a way that will ensure the resulting "ecosystem" and infrastructure is going to last, than to rush it and have it all fall apart in 5 or 10 or even 20 years?

Of course, this is Slashdot, so chances are you're the libertarian sort who hates anything that's been touched by the "government". Which is fair enough, but you shouldn't confuse cause and effect: if you want to hate the government, do so because the things it does are objectively bad. If you automatically view everything the government does as bad for no other reason than that it's the government (which you hate) that did it, then you've got it backwards - you've slipped from reason into more or less blind ideology.

Perhaps I should have added that to me it looks like they're doing the right way. I sorta figured that claiming it as 'mere' "government job" and then providing their good plan would be enough for people with a sense of irony. In any case it didn't see that anti-libertarian knee jerk aggression coming -- I really don't think libertarianism is worth any attention at all. It's a prime example of dead-on-arrival ideology.

Like the article says, âoethey reached out to all stakeholdersâ. I think the amazing part is that they got enough stakeholders to agree to the change. Change is not something that a lot of people âoeembraceâ if you will, especially government agencies that entrenched in their ways of doing things. I could easily imagine them taking ten years just to make a decision never mind getting the project started. I would say that to have gotten as much done as fast as they have would be considere

Several big failures of the UK's government's IT strategy has been due to the sheer incompetence of the *private* contractors.

Or what about train companies in the UK, or highway operators in Mexico. In both cases the original "investors" cashed in on their shares as soon as they could and left a mess behind that the government has had to paid.

I can also say that, having worked all my life in private industry, your comment, which seems to imply government=ineptitude could easily apply as well to major well k

No. They migrated the applications first. In addition they replaced bad, old applications for administrative processes with new ones, which are designed to work with modern administrative processes. That's what it taking so long. Also they are training their stuff.

I don't think you read the relevant bits. The project was put on hold a few years ago for patent legality research. And, they are doing a "soft migration" in which relevant open source applications are being installed on Windows to gear up the user base for the switch.
Just pulling the rug out from under all the users quickly is stupid and will generate nothing but backlash. I read the OSOR page, and it seems they know what they are doing and doing it well. I drive a Mercedes, and I can say that Germans don't half ass things.
Speculatively, I would say the cost is so high because the city most likely dug themselves a hole by developing loads of software that is Windows specific. But, they are doing the right thing here by getting their technology independence. In 10 years from now, their operating costs will be amazingly low since they will ditch millions in MS tax, have a user base acclimatized to Linux, flexible applications, and knowledgeable admins.
This should be an example and business case to other governments and large organizations that they too can save themselves tons of cash by just going through the pain of undoing "easy decisions".

And, they are doing a "soft migration" in which relevant open source applications are being installed on Windows to gear up the user base for the switch. Just pulling the rug out from under all the users quickly is stupid and will generate nothing but backlash.

From the article - this is a little more about the actual process:

To iron out the system's teething troubles, the project team first conducted pilot migrations in three departments that volunteered for the purpose. Before migrating a department, Matthias Braun and his colleagues in the migration support team take a close look at the particular situation in that section, and work out a solution with the local system administrators.

The LiMux migration itself begins only when the ground is thus prepared. Again, each department can choose which migration path it wants: either moving all services to the new operating system in one bold stroke, or a so-called soft migration in several stages.

During such a soft migration, the administrators first deploy OpenOffice, Firefox and Thunderbird on computers still running a version of Windows. In a second step, they switch to the new operating system. In order to minimise the impact of any problems that may occur, the first systems to be migrated are those that are not frequently used for contact with other sections of the city's administration, and do not have to exchange documents between different office program suites.

Until the end of 2008, each of the city's departments will have a "LiMux germ cell". These are groups of 30-50 workstations that will be migrated to the LiMux client. Even in departments that are sceptical towards the migration, this helps the IT staff to become familiar with the software. This approach also allows the LiMux project team to learn about the specific technical requirements of each department, and address them before the full-scale roll-out of the software.

Color me impressed. They've attempted to head virtually ever issue off at the pass. Migrating to Openoffice, Firefox and Thunderbird on XP was exactly what I did before migrating to Linux, and it's the only time I ever succeeded for more than say, a week or two. I think it's been nearly two years now for me since I began my own "soft migration" and no signs of going back. Another thing that impresses me is their "Linux Germ Cell" idea - get the IT departments up to speed slowly before rolling it out en-masse. Other people here have criticized the "only 10% rolled out" stat, but the last thing you want to do is roll out a mass linux migration without even understanding what the main bugs are or how to solve them, and you can guarantee that there will be a huge learning curve.

One thing I wonder about though - anyone with the ability to block something will do so if they perceive that their income stream is likely to be lessened somehow, either now or in the future. I hope this was anticipated. I can think of at least two solutions: make sure that these individuals are first identified and then either making sure they end up getting paid as much or more after the switch as they used to (and this is communicated to them earnestly)... or, they get purged right away, before they can block anything.

"While the proprietary solution was deemed to be slightly more cost-effective over the full period, the strategic advantage of being free to take its own IT decisions led the city council to decide in favour of the migration to GNU/Linux."

and also from the same:

"The Microsoft solution would have made it necessary to introduce an Active Directory system, which would have meant a strong lock-in and would have caused significant follow-up costs.

Okay, they want freedom to choose the software they want to use, but considering the state of OS email clients I'm not sure they really have any.

I'm not trying to troll, in fact we looked at migrating our machines at work from Outlook to Thunderbird or another free app on Windows or Linux, but gave up in the end because none of the available clients could replace what we do with Outlook. For example, Thunderbird does not have any kind of default template support, so our users would have to remember to use t

So what you are saying is that you want evolution [gnome.org], but that is one of the few options you never explored?... and don't tell me it doesn't work. It does. I have used it any time I had to deal with Outlook servers. It works fine (i.e. as good or better than Outlook) when configured properly.

P.S. - Because it is a Gnome project the page makes it sound like you need to use the Gnome Window Manager. You don't. It works great with KDE 3.x and KDE 4.x. I suspect it works with most or all other WMs as wel

Okay, they want freedom to choose the software they want to use, but considering the state of OS email clients I'm not sure they really have any.

I disagree, but let's discuss.

I'm not trying to troll, in fact we looked at migrating our machines at work from Outlook to Thunderbird or another free app on Windows or Linux, but gave up in the end because none of the available clients could replace what we do with Outlook.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt when it comes to trolling. Of course every client will have different strengths and weaknesses. Likely Outlook can't replace everything existing Thunderbird users have either. The difference being, Thunderbird can be altered by individual companies while Outlook cannot.

For example, Thunderbird does not have any kind of default template support, so our users would have to remember to use the right template every time they write an email.

The real problem here is familiarity and skill of people implementing the system, not limitations of Thunderbird. In this instance you can use the externaltemplateloader extension to load a default template based upon the user. I'd never done it, but it took me all of 30 seconds to figure out how and a 5 minutes to test it and confirm it works. If you haven't hired someone competent enough to do a Google search to do your evaluations (or better yet someone expert in the field to consult) you are unlikely to succeed in any transition and will always fail back to the status quo.

We looked at Kmail too (not bad, but lacks group calendaring and is Linux only)

Kmail is fine for parts of a company standardized on Linux or for mixed deployments where you let users have a choice of clients because you're standardized on truly open and standard protocols. I've worked in such places and found it very liberating.

For us iPhone and Blackberry integration is important too which makes things that much harder.

Why? Both have good support for both standard and proprietary e-mail protocols. How does this make choosing a desktop client harder?

What I'm saying is that unless you are willing to do some coding yourself then the freedom of OSS is not really that liberating if the area you are looking at happens to be under developed.

Well, due to the nature of opensource and its use of standard protocols, you will tend to gain more choice with it, but then the real strength of opensource is the flexibility and cost savings. The advantage multiplies with adoption rates and the size of the deployment. If you're only deploying to ten users, it makes little economic sense to pay someone to implement a feature and add it to en existing OSS client, when compared to the licensing cost of a proprietary client. When you're talking about a deployment of 100,000 users it quickly becomes cost effective to hire someone to make needed changes or even have a full time developer working on a project and adding features and fixing bugs important to your company.

...but there is still a lot of important software we need that forces us to stay with commercial software.

For some instances this is certainly true, but I find that more often people simply think it is true and don't bother consulting anyone who actually knows. If you're seriously considering different applications for some purpose, don't just talk to closed source commercial companies, talk to open source commercial companies. Ask Redhat or Canonical what they have to offer and what the can do for you. It makes a lot of sense especially for new transitions. If you don't feel like paying them in the long term, you can always go it alone later.

One of the biggest problems with this sort of adoption is people try to sell it as short term cost saving measure, when transitions will always incur expenses. OSS is abo

When you live in this city (Munich) and state (Bavaria) you are immersed in a many centuries old culture.Munich might not be Rome but a thousand years old structures are what you grow up with, the same is valid for the continuity of the administration.

So who is going to complain about a few years of software migration especially when the goal is greater independence?

Munich might not be Rome but a thousand years old structures are what you grow up with, the same is valid for the continuity of the administration.

You can say that again. I have lived in Munich and was talking to a guy who was working on an authoritative Latin dictionary at one of the universities with full literary attributions. The dictionary project has been running for something like a century and will take some more years before it is finished.

Do try to remember the unexpected pause for research of possible patent issues. One might wonder if MSFT made all of that noise about hitting Linux with their patent portfolio as an attempt to derail efforts like this.:)

"Itâ(TM)s not only a dump troll reservoir, the site owner really tries to deal with facts - of course facts interpreted by him in a very strange manner. He is repeating the same lies again and again, trying to hide them behind real quotesâ¦ his thoughs have no basis in facts, but who will know this?

Well, the execution of their plan in a timely manner is definitely a failure.. the blogs from both sides are also failures in providing any reasons... Mr Limuxwatch hides any information about himself or his motives.. I mean, is he upset because it hasn't progressed to his satisfaction ?.. Is he upset because he doesn't want it done at all ?.. exactly what is his stake in all this ?

Mr Limuxwatch hides any information about himself or his motives.. I mean, is he upset because it hasn't progressed to his satisfaction ?.. Is he upset because he doesn't want it done at all ?.. exactly what is his stake in all this ?

It's obvious that for him, Linux == bad, and he wants Munich to "come to its senses" and cave in.

They did a little more than migrating to Linux. They started by migrating the applications. And while they did it they improved the internal processes. So they used the migration also to improve other parts of the bureaucracy/of the city management. This is why this is taking so long. They rewrote specialized applications, they integrated several small office solutions to city wide solutions. And they said in the beginning they do not want to overstrain the users. So they first give them new browsers, email

From reading both, I tend to gravitate towards the failure side.
It's 2009 and only 10% migration? Wasn't this suppose to save money?
It's a frigging embarrassment! How are you suppose to point to Munich
as an example of free and open-source software working on a city scale
when they can't even implement it in a reasonable time-frame?

I think you got got labeled flamebait, not that I agree, because your
conclusions appear
unreasonable, namely that you are measuring the project on criteria
which do not match the project's own stated goals.

First of all: Munich was said that the their goal is not to save
money in the short-term, but to gain 'autonomy' from a single
supplier. The savings, if any, are to be realized in the long
term.

Second: Schedule and cost overruns are (unfortunately) normal for
projects this size and complexity. What is your idea of a reasonable
time scale anyways? With some searching I can probably identify
other similar sized projects which eventually succeeded, in spite of
serious schedule overruns.
BTW: The sound byte that only 10% of the workstations
have been migrated in X years doesn't scale to mean that it will take
9 * X more years to complete to rest of them. I know you didn't
state this, but the LimuxWatch blog implies this in many of
their schedule slip lists.

Third: There is more at stake than producing Linux-based work
stations and a support infrastructure for Munich. This is a first
of it's type project, meaning a major public-sector open source
deployment on the desktop. If this succeeds, then the lessons
learned will form the basis for other similar projects.
In other words, don't be surprised if LimuxWatch blog has a
hidden agenda.

Funny choice of name that reminds me of migrationwatch.org which claims to be "MigrationwatchUK is an independent and non-political body established in October 2001. Our purposes are to; monitor migration flows to and from the UK,"

In reality its a right Wing organization pushing its nasty agenda where ever it can.

The sound byte that only 10% of the workstations have been migrated in X years doesn't scale to mean that it will take 9 * X more years to complete to rest of them. I know you didn't state this, but the LimuxWatch blog implies this in many of their schedule slip lists.

Yeah, everyone knows things are expected to take O(X log X) time with a slip list.

Someone linked to your blog on/. and it is not going well for you, your ideas, or your writing style. You might want to disable your comments section - just based on my analysis of your failure to grasp the basic tenants of reporting.
June 28, 2009 5:25 AM

Most users aren't powerusers. Everytime my mother or sister calls me I shiver in fear that something has gone wrong with their windows machines which they use for no other than stuff that linux could easily have done but which they continue to use because "that's what I'm used to". I swear, next time they ask me to reinstall I'm installing ubuntu.

Over the years I've read a great deal about various efforts
to belittle and undermine it. The Munich Limux Watch blog
seems like an attempt to systematically discredit the entire
project. I'd love to find out who's behind it. I doubt it's
directly supported Microsoft, but I'd wouldn't be surprised
if there is some business interest, perhaps a disgruntled
IT supplier or even a public sector employee who doesn't want
their desktop system changed, behind it. Perhaps some clever
Slashdot reader can find out more.

Don't be surprised that there are unexpected costs on a
project of this size and complexity. Think about similar
projects in the (semi-)public sector, some of which had
factor 10 cost overruns and were abandoned (for example:
Denver airport luggage processing system). In the end, the
ability to actually complete the project, even if years
late, and the long-term cost savings will determine its real
success. [See my signature below]

We shouldn't expect Limux to have an instant pay back. Even
though the operating system is free, the installation
scripting, customization, roll-out, training and support have
real costs, which will take years to amortize. The gain will
only be in the long-term when the infrastructure to support
Limux is in place and saves from not having license costs
associated with forced upgrades are realized.

Further, you must bear in mind that Munich is a pioneer in
even attempting to replace a major Microsoft based
infrastructure with open source software. They are having to
to do everything from scratch, which I'm sure increases the
cost.

Munich's Limux project is a battleground for Microsoft. It
it succeeds then it will become the model for similar
initiatives. This could make non-Microsoft desktop systems
a real alternative for large institutions. This is
Microsoft's disaster scenario, and could ruin their
monopoly hold on the marker. They might even have to,
gasp, compete.

Further, you must bear in mind that Munich is a pioneer in even attempting to replace a major Microsoft based infrastructure with open source software. They are having to to do everything from scratch, which I'm sure increases the cost.

That's what you'd call an early adoptor, they usually pay more, but definitly in this case, everyone, especially the other german government agencies that will adopt it too, will benefit.

Making an assumption here, but perhaps Open Office's release of two major versions [wikipedia.org] during the project's lifecycle may have something to do with the delay.

If I was running this show, I'd have uber-time blocked off for compatibility testing to make sure key stakeholders (see, "important people with important spreadsheets") were happy, even if that meant delaying roll-out for the next major OOo release.

German society and culture is different from the English speaking world. They only accept perfection, anything less is off the radar. They also indulge in Grundlichkeit (excessive thoroughness) which means that everything must be done all out, Unter Voll Dampf (under full steam) and if it costs time or money to do it, they'll take a first class ticket everytime. Not only that but in engineering they test everything to absolute destruction, build it completely new, break it again and then build it completely new and continue this process with the dedication of a Zen master. You just need to take a walk up any mountain in Germany to observe this in action. No one is wearing Jeans and a T-shirt and everyone is toting the sort of equipment required on expedition to summit K2. They even have similar equipment for their dogs.

So ten per cent success rate considering the incredibly short work week state employees enjoy is not just going well, it's an unprecedent level of efficiency.

I'm living in Berlin now and of the things which hits me hard just about every day (literally) are the bloody doors.German doors aren't mere convenience items, they are designed to stop tanks. British doors in comparison are made of cardboard, mainly for show, you can swing one open with a flick of the wrist. Attempt that with a German door an you will be nursing a sprained shoulder for the rest of the week. Clearly it's a design intention that going through a door should be something one does with care and

If you live in Berlin, then you could see Germany's imperfection. That's what makes that city so enjoyable. However, I have to agree, that Germans tend to seek perfection in their engineering work. Sometimes they over-engineer something.

Do you think there is a time limit? Munich is nearly 900 years old - what would be the rush? I think they are going about it in an interesting fashion; first transition to open source software that runs on Windows (OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird). Only when people are used to this software do they start transitioning the desktops. Seems pretty sensible to me and it looks like they are playing a long game here.

They changed their processes. And while they did that, they migrated to OSS applications. And as a last step they change the operating system. And do not forget. They are Germans, they have a plan. And they will follow it to the bitter end.

At the start of the early 2000s there was essentially a controlled experiment about implementing Linux on the desktop.

In the first category we had companies like AutoZone, Burlington Coat Factory and Pep Boys that never had developed a Windows culture to begin with. These were Unix shops (generally SCO or Solaris) and they transitioned quickly (within a year or 2) and easily (say under 100 man years) to Linux.

In the second category we had technology knowledgeable companies that wanted to transition to all Unix/Linux, and considered it important but not critical. IBM, Oracle, Sun (Sun Java desktop) being leading examples. They failed, believing it was not worth the distraction even though this failure was quite embarrassing. In many people's estimation they gave up much too quickly.

In the third category we had places that wanted to transition to Linux for ideological reasons. Most of them found the processes daunting and gave up. Munich is a great example of the 3rd category. They have some technical depth but not a technical user base. They have financial resources but are somewhat cost constrained. And they had a Windows culture. That is Munich is sort of a good case study for most companies that are not IT focused. When Munich is successful they will provide a wonderful example that it is possible and how to do it. Right now they provide a caution of the complexities.

Linux dreamers have faith that Linux is more than just a niche product for hobbyists and power users.

Mr. Babcock then goes on for like another 3,000 words, explaining how Microsoft, which makes over a billion dollars profit each month needs to follow the Linux model, which makes zero. Good luck with that!

An inability to distinguish between "bias" and "opinion" seems to me to be one of the fundamental failings of much of modern society. Bias is when you launch "an independent study of Linux TCO" and it turns out that you used models which are specifically favourable for you. Opinion is when you say "I think you should boycott Novell and this is why".

In the case of Microsoft there are recognised problems with the morality of their business model. It's the client who has (should have!) the liberty to go along with a particular business model and Munich has made it's decision not to follow the Microsoft ways.

Some claim there is no morality in business but especially when public monies are involved you better review that opinion.

Together with SuSE/Novell and IBM, the city worked out a detailed concept for the migration during 2003 and 2004. During summer 2004, the project was put on hold while a study was conducted to clear up legal insecurities related to software patents. The actual migration has been running since 2005.

Most parts of the city's administration choose a soft migration, first installing the open source applications Thunderbird, Firefox and OpenOffice on Windows computers. The migration to OpenOffice also introduces a new system for managing templates, called Wollmux. In a second phase, the departments then roll out the GNU/Linux basic client.

Notice it was delayed by patent FUD. Software patents are not valid in the EU.

Notice also that they are implementing it in stages, using Open Source on top of Windows and only some departments installing Linux at a given time. It has a time line going to 2012 for completion. Incremental migration is pretty normal on large projects.

This whole Munchen idea was NOT about how much the company's involved making money. It was about the CONSUMER paying less money.

You know - I always think it is strange that these arguments are all about how the company's are driving well, but not how the consumers (and that are you and me and the man in the street - make no mistake) are served well. I do not care a bit if Microsoft gets money or gets a lot more money. However - I DO care if it is MY money. Open Source software is cheap, so it is a big bonus for me as consumer. I do not care if Ballmer gets a lot of money - as long it's not my money. Result? If I buy some Microsoft software I shoot myself in the foot. Most consumers - and that's most of you and certainly me - are better off with Open Source software. Simple...

like your maths education 30% growth on initial sales of 0(%) is still 0%.:-)

BTW percentages do not lie, not when they're audited and used as offical accounts in the stock market. RHT is currently trading at $19.69 making it worth $3.7 billion. Hardly 0% sales, not quite a tiny, insignificant player at all.

Growth is what matters to investors and the markets - no-one cares about how big or how much something has today, they only care about tomorrow. sure RedHat is a minnow in comparison to Microsoft, but th

As Microsoft strives to migrate their core technologies from the desktop onto the Web, so too is their propaganda machine migrating from the established press to the informal social web. Microsoft shills are invading social web sites everywhere - in forums, discussion groups, comments to news items, edits to Wikipedia, manipulation of search engines, comments to blogs - posing as innocent participants to promote their agenda and counter wide spread complaints about their shady marketing practises. Even in the comments section of blogs by Microsoft employees on their own corporate site they employ sock puppets to say the things the author felt inappropriate to say directly. They race to place their shill postings at the top spot in the comments section of news and blogs, or perhaps they are given advance notice enabling them to do this where they are a sponsor.

The evidence is here on Slashdot for all to see, without embellishments from me. What I say here is amounts to only a digest of hundreds of postings by others. A careful investigator can see for himself the evolution of discussions on Microsoft related issues, especially those accusing them of their usual hard ball tactics. As one reads from Slashdot's historical record on through to recent times, the evolution of Microsoft's efforts to pervert Slashdot's discussions becomes readily apparent. Microsoft's ambition is to twist internet discussions around a full 180 degrees until these discussions become a platform for propaganda from Microsoft's "Ministry of Truth". A study of the comments of the shills posted here can be cross-correlated with postings on other sites. Their pattern of saturating a discussion with shill postings, and the repeating of mindless memes becomes obvious. Their harassment, ridicule, and suppression of criticisms is designed to intimidated those who would speak out against them. They seek to establish and enforce a discipline of giving Microsoft "fair treatment" and their propaganda the same consideration and respect a real person would deserve.

In the process they are destroying Web 2 as we know it. This insidious attack on the infrastructure we rely upon to form our opinions in a complex world has both a direct and an inhibitory effect on free speech as a side effect.

We must stop this while it is in its infancy. Once it fully established, it will become much more difficult to root out, and other ruthless corporations, organizations, and even governments will want to emulate the success of Microsoft's campaign. This is the nightmare vision of the end of the social internet as we know it.

As much as I like to bash Microsoft, that doesn't completely answer his question. Even if there are more pro-Microsoft posters on Slashdot, does it mean that those posters are shills? Maybe their claims are justified.

As much as I like to bash Microsoft, that doesn't completely answer his question. Even if there are more pro-Microsoft posters on Slashdot, does it mean that those posters are shills? Maybe their claims are justified.

You're right, he did not document it well, but take a look at "uassholes" reply for some nice commentary by one of the people running Digg about how there is definitely an astroturf program in place to bury articles critical of Microsoft there. Personally on Slashdot I've made a lot comments about MS's antitrust abuses in various articles and I noticed in such articles there are often dozens of comments from a handful of users whose posting history shows they only post in articles discussing Microsoft or Linux and always expressing the same view. I don't have any proof that these posters are in fact astroturfers, but if not they have a lot of time and very, very limited interest here. They generally only reply to highly modded posts ignoring everything else including replies to their comments. Further, I notice that comments I have which can be construed as critical of MS's practices are often modded to +5 for several days, then modded down significantly afterwards once the article is off the main page. Maybe it is simply normal behavior I don't understand, but I'm highly suspicious.

I used to follow some small stocks on Yahoo for a while. The message boards became almost useless because there were a few trolls who would post endlessly the same things over and over again on totally obscure stock message boards. They would usually get replied to but would never argue. They would just post the same thing over and over again. This is probably the best indicator of a sock puppet or troll. They never argue or reply to criticism. They just keep posting the same crap over and over again

Now you will note that in the old story about Vista, an OS that was constantly ridiculed here on Slasdot, the comments are overwhelmingly anti-Microsoft. The shill campaign had clearly not started yet. Now compare the comments in the recent stories, and you will see that the shills are out in full force.

Or maybe it's simply because Vista really sucked bad, while e.g. Win7 (which is what MS-related articles tend to be about) does not?

I've tryed at work to switch on linux, and the problem is, you will have a lot of troubles if you're alone with it. I had no problem working on linux, but every time somebody did a commit violating case sensitiveness it was a pain for me, every time somebody did powerpoint presentation of a recent feature I was cut out and more.<br/><br/>It could have worked, if every other on the team switched along, but if you're a linux island in a microsoft world, you will surely have lot of trouble - that i

obviously mileage may vary:smile:<br/><br/>as a java developer, I had problems with careless casing of packages and files, so that now and then I had to fix code of the other people (the boss was clear that one condition for running with linux was to make no interference with the work of others)<br/><br/>powerpoint file on openoffice are quite garbled, and almost unintelligible if using microsotf "smartarts", and for some reason introductory documentation was delivered via slides

Maybe they are only putting Linux on completely new systems, and old systems are getting OpenOffice when they need to be serviced. My work computer is at least 6 years old. It might get replaced next month with the new fiscal year.

It normally takes about 20 minutes to install a customised version of Linux for a known desktop. You can even connect to a build server so you don't have to lug around distribution CD's or DVD's. I will concede that making a customised Linux distribution can take a few days (as will a MS Windows custom installation) but rolling that out is simple and quick. Total cost for the non commercial Linux distribution plus Office and ancillary software is effectively zero dollars. Total cost of Microsoft OS plus Office and Microsoft extras is what massive discount Microsoft is willing to give you just so a Linux distribution is not used.

From the blog:

According to vice director SchieÃYl, an upgrade of the then-existing Windows NT4 operating system to Windows XP would have been as much as two million euros cheaper.

Hmm I wonder how they arrived at that figure? If the blog said Windows 2000 to Windows XP then I might concede however NT4 is normally used on servers (it's a bit expensive for the desktop) I would have expected NT4 to Windows 2003. Are we talking servers here or the desktop and why XP did not Microsoft want firms to upgrade to Vista? Even if the figure they gave is true well that is Government for you and for a city like Munich then 2 million Euros is not that much for a one time cost..

The biggest obstacle to installing a Linux Distribution on the desktop is actually middle management not the rank and file worker. If your business has locked themselves into Microsoft solutions then shifting to Linux solutions is going to be hard be it server or desktop and in many ways expensive because there are many proprietary Microsoft solutions that make integration with other operating systems difficult. It must be noted that this is not the fault of other operating systems but of Microsoft, after-all it is not as if Linux solutions hide their API's and source code.

NT4 came in Server and Workstation versions (and some other big-server versions, I think). The Workstation version was not much more expensive than Windows 95, especially with a corporate site-license and had a lot of features that make sense in a corporate environment (e.g. login that you can't bypass by pressing 'escape'). It was a bit expensive for home users (I ran it because I got a free copy and bought a computer which came with no OS), but a lot of students ran it because the student license OS bun

Wonder how this would compare with similar projects involving proprietary software. Assuming that it would be possible to blog in such a way without the software vendors and contractors setting their lawyers loose!

"There are perhaps two main lessons to be drawn from Munich's experience. The first one is that such a large-scale migration requires careful analysis and planning, as well as a clearly defined goal. It bears repeating that in Munich this goal is the strategic independence from software suppliers. Lower IT costs are a welcome side-effect, but autonomy is more important."

I don't believe that anyone in the Linux world has ever suggested that migrating to Linux is completely "free", or even that it saves money in the short term. It most definitely saves tons of money in the long run. To suggest otherwise amounts to FUD.

And let it be noted that there is no more delicate matter to take in hand nor more dangerous to conduct, nor more doubtful in its success than to set up as a leader in the introduction of changes. For he who innovates will have for his enemies all those who are well off under the existing order of things, and only lukewarm supporters in those who might be better off under the new.